The groups want an independent review of how the policy affects migrants’ access to healthcare.
Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Representatives of more than 70,000 doctors have urged ministers to suspend regulations that force hospitals to charge overseas visitors upfront for NHS care.

Three royal medical colleges and one faculty say the charging regime is harming people’s health by deterring them from seeking NHS help when they fall ill. Payments in advance are “a concerning barrier to care”, they say.

Their plea is the strongest opposition yet from the medical community to hospitals in England being compelled to charge migrants up to tens of thousands of pounds before they treat them.

The statement has been signed by the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Faculty of Public Health.

They want Matt Hancock, the health and social care secretary, to suspend regulations brought in in 2015 and 2017 that specify when overseas visitors should be charged for receiving NHS care. Charges should not be enforced until a full independent review is undertaken of how they are affecting migrants’ access to healthcare, the four groups say.

Citing evidence of mothers-to-be and children being left without medical aid, the colleges say: “We do not believe that regulations that lead to such situations are appropriate. They are having a direct impact on individual health and have potential implications for wider public health.

“Early diagnosis and treatment are vital to improve patients’ outcomes and – in the case of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV – to protect public health.”

Some patients have been wrongly charged because they could not prove they were entitled to free care, the statement adds.

Charging migrants in advance for care threatens to weaken the bonds of trust that should exist between doctors and patients, the four groups say. “The role of doctors in this process has the potential to damage the vital trust between us and our patients, and is likely to lead to poorer outcomes and contribute to already low morale in our profession.”

Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the British Medical Association and the former NHS England chief executive David Nicholson have all previously voiced their unease about the regulations.

Groups campaigning against the charges, such as the health NGO Medact and Doctors of the World, welcomed the colleges’ move.

“These short-sighted, poorly implemented policies around upfront charging are a step backwards in the fight for good public health and universal healthcare. Everyone has the right to healthcare, regardless of immigration status, and intimidating patients to stay away from hospital under the guise of cost-saving on the back of eight years of under-funding has no place in the NHS,” said Joanna Dobbin, a junior doctor and a member of Medact’s migrant solidarity group.

Prof Shirley Hodgson, a cancer specialist, said the “harsh” charges were in breach of the NHS’s founding duty to provide universal healthcare. “It is unconscionable to ask health workers to act as gatekeepers for medical services, putting them in a position to decide who is eligible for healthcare and who is not,” she said.